Sharing a connection
 

O.K., some friends and I are thinking of moving into a house next year, and after being used to T1 in the dorms, I feel I couldnt go back to dialup at all, so I've done some checking and looked into getting DSL. I want to be able to set up a small "home network" that will share the DSL connection with other computers in the house.

I'm sure I could do this with linux, but I'd like to get into the specifics. Is there a good tutorial somewhere that explains how to do this? I was also wondering what would be needed. I'm completely new to networking, and getting Samba to allow me to share on the LAN and browse it was an accomplishment! :D

Well, thanks for any pointers anyone could give!

If you've got a spare pc you could use smoothwal or if one you doesn't mind having their pc on all the time they could set it up as a router.

Being a lazy sod myself I just bought a hadware router (for all they cost) and plugged everything into that.

Now doubt someone will be more helpful and point you in the right direction for linux though..
:)

If you have more than one or two computers I'd go with Looking_Lost's advice and get a hardware router like a Lynksys or something similar that has a multi-port switch and handles the dhcp for you. Otherwise you'll have to have a NIC for each computer you want to connect. If it's just one or two, you can just get a NIC for each computer and run some cross-over cable to each one. Then setup IP masquerading. It's not that hard to do. I know there are a couple of threads here on the site on how to set it up or go right to the source: www.netfilter.org.
HTH

ip masquerading is not hard to set up and i use my primary linux box for the job i got all of my info at this site. You definitely don't need to use of one those floppy disk linux micro distros unless you actually have an old (really old unused pc). It's actully fun to set up and i learned alot about iptables (or ipchains for older kernels). enjoy!

http://ipmasq.webhop.net/